Part 5 (1/2)

'Well!' said Kendal, laughing, balancing himself on the table facing Wallace. 'That's a tempting prospect! But if I don't help you out you'll give in, I know; you're the softest of men, and I don't want you to give in.'

'Yes, of course I shall give in,' said Wallace, with smiling decision.

'If you don't want me to, suppose you take the responsibility. I've known you do difficult things before; you manage somehow to get your own way without offending people.'

'H'm,' said Kendal; 'I don't know whether that's flattering or not.' He began to walk up and down the room again cogitating. 'I don't mind trying,' he said at last, 'in a very gingerly way. I can't, of course, undertake to be brutal. It would be impossible for any one to treat _her_ roughly. But there might be ways of doing it. There's time to think over the best way of doing it. Supposing, however, she took offence?

Supposing, after Sunday next, she never speaks to either of us again?'

'Oh!' said Wallace, wincing, 'I should give up the play at once if she really took it to heart. She attaches one to her. I feel towards her as though she were a sister--only more interesting, because there's the charm of novelty.'

Kendal smiled. 'Miss Bretherton hasn't got to that yet with me. Sisters, to my mind, are as interesting as anybody, and more so. But how on earth, Wallace, have you escaped falling in love with her all this time?'

'Oh, I had enough of that last year,' said Wallace abruptly, rising and looking for his overcoat, while his face darkened; 'it's an experience I don't take lightly.'

Kendal was puzzled; then his thoughts quickly put two and two together.

He remembered a young Canadian widow who had been a good deal at Mrs.

Stuart's house the year before; he recalled certain suspicions of his own about her and his friend--her departure from London and Wallace's long absence in the country. But he said nothing, unless there was sympathy in the cordial grip of his hand as he accompanied the other to the door.

On the threshold Wallace turned irresolutely. 'It will be a risk next Sunday,' he said; 'I'm determined it shan't be anything more. She is not the woman, I think, to make a quarrel out of a thing like that.'

'Oh no,' said Kendal; 'keep your courage up. I think it may be managed.

You give me leave to handle _Elvira_ as I like.'

'Oh heavens, yes!' said Wallace; 'get me out of the sc.r.a.pe any way you can, and I'll bless you for ever. What a brute I am never to have asked after your work! Does it get on?'

'As much as any work can in London just now. I must take it away with me somewhere into the country next month. It doesn't like dinner-parties.'

'Like me,' said Wallace, with a shrug.

'Nonsense!' said Kendal; 'you're made for them. Good-night.'

'Good-night. It's awfully good of you.'

'What? Wait till it's well over!'

Wallace ran down the stairs and was gone. Kendal walked back slowly into his room and stood meditating. It seemed to him that Wallace did not quite realise the magnificence of his self-devotion. 'For, after all, it's an awkward business,' he said to himself, shaking his head over his own temerity. 'How I am to come round a girl as frank, as direct, as unconventional as that, I don't quite know! But she ought not to have that play; it's one of the few good things that have been done for the English stage for a long time past. It's well put together, the plot good, three or four strongly marked characters, and some fine Victor Hugoish dialogue, especially in the last act. But there is extravagance in it, as there is in all the work of that time, and in Isabel Bretherton's hands a great deal of it would be grotesque: nothing would save it but her reputation and the get-up, and that would be too great a shame. No, no; it will not do to have the real thing swamped by all sorts of irrelevant considerations in this way. I like Miss Bretherton heartily, but I like good work, and if I can save the play from her, I shall save her too from what everybody with eyes in his head would see to be a failure!'

It was a rash determination. Most men would have prudently left the matter to those whom it immediately concerned, but Kendal had a Quixotic side to him, and at this time in his life a whole-hearted devotion to certain intellectual interests, which decided his action on a point like this. In spite of his life in society, books and ideas were at this moment much more real to him than men and women. He judged life from the standpoint of the student and the man of letters, in whose eyes considerations, which would have seemed abstract and unreal to other people, had become magnified and all-important. In this matter of Wallace and Miss Bretherton he saw the struggle between an ideal interest, so to speak, and a personal interest, and he was heart and soul for the ideal.

Face to face with the living human creature concerned, his principles, as we have seen, were apt to give way a little, for the self underneath was warm-hearted and impressionable, but in his own room and by himself they were strong and vigorous, and would allow of no compromise.

He ruminated over the matter during his solitary meal, planning his line of action. 'It all depends,' he said to himself, 'on that,--if what Wallace says about her is true, if my opinion has really any weight with her, I shall be able to manage it without offending her. It's good of her to speak of me as kindly as she seems to do; I was anything but amiable on that Surrey Sunday. However, I felt then that she liked me all the better for plain-speaking; one may be tolerably safe with her that she won't take offence unreasonably. What a picture she made as she pulled the primroses to pieces--it seemed all up with one! And then her smile flas.h.i.+ng out--her eagerness to make amends--to sweep away a harsh impression--her pretty gratefulness--enchanting!'

On Sat.u.r.day, at lunch-time, Wallace rushed in for a few minutes to say that he himself had avoided Miss Bretherton all the week, but that things were coming to a crisis. 'I've just got this note from her,' he said despairingly, spreading it out before Kendal, who was making a sc.r.a.ppy bachelor meal, with a book on each side of him, at a table littered with papers.

'Could anything be more prettily done? If you don't succeed to-morrow, Kendal, I shall have signed the agreement before three days are over!'

It was indeed a charming note. She asked him to fix any time he chose for an appointment with her and her business manager, and spoke with enthusiasm of the play. 'It cannot help being a great success,' she wrote; 'I feel that I am not worthy of it, but I will do my very best.

The part seems to me, in many respects, as though it had been written for me. You have never, indeed, I remember, consented in so many words to let me have _Elvira_. I thought I should meet you at Mrs. Stuart's yesterday, and was disappointed. But I am sure you will not say me nay, and you will see how grateful I shall be for the chance your work will give me.'